


evergreen

by wildlings (candybank)



Category: GOT7
Genre: M/M, fluffy and christmassy and shippy, hospital au, med student mark, no beta we die like men, nurse yugyeom, yugyeom writes one piece fanfic so its canon compliant obviously pfft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-25 02:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21688285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candybank/pseuds/wildlings
Summary: mark is a tired medical student, and yugyeom is a bad writer but he's a good roommate.
Relationships: Kim Yugyeom/Mark Tuan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	evergreen

every morning, yugyeom watches mark drag himself to a job he claims to love in a city he doesn't know, and every night, he watches mark pull himself back home. he comes and goes through the small wooden door of their tiny little apartment, blue scrubs, sensible sneakers, backpack heavy with books and stethoscopes and thermometers and that small hammer that you hit people's knees with to make them kick suddenly and whatever else medical interns bring to their jobs that seem like hell.

almost a year into living with mark, a medical intern, and yugyeom still isn't sure what a 'medical intern' is. all he knows is that mark always looks tired and beaten down and he never gets any sleep and he used to be handsome, but now he has bags under his eyes and lines have started to harden across his forehead. he's still handsome, yugyeom thinks, he has always thought so, maybe he has thought about it way too much, just not in the way he was. like this, yugyeom thinks, like this, buttoning his coat and pulling on his backpack, getting ready to go to work on a stormy december day, operating on barely three hours of sleep as he always is, mark looks like the husk of a butterfly.

“see you, gyeom,” mark bids his roommate goodbye, sighing as he opens the door.

“keep warm, hyung!” yugyeom replies as cheerily as he can. he's not feeling particularly cheerful, it had rained all night and it looks like it's going to rain all day, there isn't a single ray of sunlight in sight and the first snow didn't fall like the weatherman said it would, there isn't much to be cheerful about, but he's hoping that if he radiates enough happy, some of it will rub off on mark.

mark looks back, mustering half a sleepy smile, before shutting the door behind him.

yugyeom, an insurance agent with a degree in nursing that might have been useful if he bothered to get licensed in the three years since he graduated, who’d taken the day off because he doesn’t like bad weather, he writes that down: _husk of a butterfly_. it’s the title of his next book. or poem. or essay or short story or haiku or one piece fanfiction. _fluttering in and out and in and out_ , he scribbles on. he pauses to think, then scratches out every word after 'fluttering'. fluttering from— fluttering to— he puts his pen down and thinks, staring out of the window into a wet, concrete city.

***

mark forgets his phone on the dining table, beside an abandoned bowl of cold milk and soggy cornflakes. he was in a rush that morning, and yugyeom wanted to help, he always wants to help, and so he said don't worry about it hyung, i'll clean up hyung, you go to work, stay safe, keep warm! but it's three in the afternoon now, and yugyeom has all but forgotten his promises when a loud noise starts blasting from behind him. it's mark's ringtone—Beacon—and yugyeom turns around to see his roommate's phone flopping around the glass tabletop like a fish out of water.

he panics. ringtones always make him panic. you'd think working with phones and people would make him any better at dealing with phones and people, but yugyeom is nothing if not an anxious piece of shit, and so he immediately drops his playstation controller to answer the call. it bounces off of the couch and ricochets onto the tiled floor. yugyeom winces, but the continuous ringing pulls his attention away from the tragedy.

"hello?" he answers, almost breathless by the time he crosses the two feet separating the living room and the dining area.

"mark, it's hyung," the man on the other line says, american english and affectionate. yugyeom opens his mouth to speak, but he's cut off too soon.

"hey, listen, i know you're busy up there and we're all real proud of you alright, but is there really no way you can come home? just for christmas eve dinner? you know it's such a big deal for dad. and he _says_ it's fine you can't come because he wants you to study hard, but he's a wreck about it, bro. you know how he is. i told him you said you've been feeling homesick and i think he almost had a breakdown right in the middle of dinner," the man laughs. "anyway, he's making all your favorites. we all miss you here. so if you can come home at all even if it's just a day, give me a call, okay? so i can book you a flight and everything. but if you can't, let me know still, so i can get you that christmas tree you've been crying about," he chuckles, "alright well, i 'gotta go now but good luck over there. we're all rooting for you."

the line clicks dead, yugyeom's mouth still hanging open from when he meant to say something.

***

they're in the middle of another takeout dinner—tonight's menu: soups and noodles and dumplings from the pricey taiwanese place forty-five minutes away where they always get their food from whenever mark's feeling particularly down, or whenever he's celebrating something particularly big—when yugyeom thinks it's finally the right time to talk about the phone call. after he got the call, he literally did nothing but mull about it, thinking about what to say and how to say it, when the right time would be, when the wrong time would be. his friends liked to tease him for being impulsive and careless, but yugyeom knew that he could be thoughtful when he wanted to be.

"uh, hyung," he starts, barely lifting his eyes from the table to look at mark. your brother called, is what he means to say, you left your phone today and your brother called and i answered it because you know how ringing phones make me nervous a-ha-ha you're so sexy, anyway, he called and asked if you would come home because your dad's all torn up about you not being there, and he said he told your dad that you said you've been homesick, have you been homesick?, is there anything i can do? also if you want a christmas tree we can get one! i know a great place that sells these little colored plastic christmas trees that—

"have you been feeling... homesick?"

mark doesn't answer immediately, and yugyeom starts to feel nervous, because he might have miscalculated, might have misread the room. mark might be seething right now, trying to burn holes into his skull, so he gathers up the courage to look across the table, ready to wince at a moment's notice in the likely case that mark yells at him.

_wait, does he want that to happen?_

he lifts his eyes and sees that mark is blinking at him curiously. _god_ , yugyeom thinks, _god he's so fucking cute._

"what?" mark chuckles, "why are you asking all of a sudden?"

"nothing!" yugyeom answers too quickly, hurriedly picking up his chopsticks so he can swish around the noodles in his bowl, "i mean, i don't know, i just... it's christmas and you're away from home and everything. and your shifts seem to be getting longer so... i was just wondering."

it's a smoother save than yugyeom could have ever hoped for, but it's also kind of a bold faced lie, and it's starting to make him feel uncomfortable. liars go to hell, and mark is a doctor so he will definitely be going to heaven, and yugyeom wants to be wherever mark is. and so he hopes he'll start telling the whole truth soon.

mark smiles, gently guiding a spoonful of soup into his mouth before answering. "yeah, i've been feeling a little homesick," he admits, voice softening, pausing for a beat, as if deciding whether to stand still or take a step forward. "it's christmas eve this weekend and my dad... it's a big deal for him. he cooks up all this great food and he calls up all my aunts and uncles and cousins and everything, even the ones we don't know, and he invites them over so we can all have this big dinner," he chuckles fondly, his body shaking with either exhaustion or happiness, sounding a little like the man on the phone. "it's the first time i won't be spending christmas eve there so," he takes in a breath, exhales it in another tired laugh, "yeah, i'm a little sad about it. it's fine, though. i knew i wouldn't be able to make it home for the holidays when i took this program here but," he bites off a modest amount of meat from a chicken leg, trailing off entirely.

yugyeom nods, nods. there's a silence for a while, comfortable and quiet.

"do you want to get a christmas tree?" yugyeom pipes up out of nowhere.

"hm?"

"a christmas tree," he parrots, "i know this place that sells plastic colored trees. they're pretty nice. we can get one that's as high as the ceiling, if you want. i think they have those. our ceiling's not that high anyway. then we can decorate it— i mean, or i can, and we can keep it lit up. maybe hang some snowmen on the windows, i don't know."

mark laughs softly. and yugyeom knows science, he knows physics and math kind of, but he wants to bottle up that sound and listen to it play forever.

(voice recorders exist, he remembers belatedly.)

"sure," mark says, smiling because his body can't muster up the energy to laugh anymore.

"no way—really?"

"yeah, why not. i don't know how much help i'll be, though. all the doctors are on vacation now. jinyoung says everyone's going to be working longer shifts."

"oh, don't even worry about it!" yugyeom says reassuringly, talking a little louder and a little faster the way he does when he gets worked up, leaning forward with his shoulders tense the way they are when he's excited, "i'll take care of everything, hyung. it'll be great!"

it's sheer endearment that lets mark exhale a tiny laugh. "i'm sure it will be, gyeom."

***

and so what if he spent all his money on decorations and he's too broke to buy a christmas tree and he took the day off to decorate the apartment for his homesick roommate?

yugyeom lugs his two big paper bags of holiday paraphernalia all the way back to the apartment, and he spends the rest of the day trying to make a gingerbread home out of a concrete box. he cuts up every loose piece of paper he can find, rolls them up into little balls and scatters them over every inch of visible space like snow. he hangs up little snowmen on strings, and puts two festive stockings over the tv because there's no fireplace to tack them onto. there's not much to do after that but decorate the tree he doesn't have. the apartment is small, and he couldn't afford too many decorations anyway, even with the money that mark had contributed.

it's fine, he thinks, and he looks around the room for something that might resemble a tree.

***

the commute from the hospital to his apartment building is a blur. normally, mark treads the fifteen-minute walk back home so he can have something in his day to call exercise, but it's cold and everything is wet and he has a backpack that weights about ten tons and he's coming home from a particularly awful shift, and so he calls a cab and promptly passes out in the backseat.

half a nap later, the driver shakes him awake. he has drool on his chin, and he's embarrassed so he tips the driver almost as much as he pays for the ride. quickly hauls himself into the building, into the elevator. he doesn't really know. it's muscle memory and muscle memory alone that gets him from the lobby to his apartment door.

too tired to reach for his keys, he knocks on the door. usually, yugyeom opens it almost instantaneously, but now no one answers. he sighs, thinking maybe yugyeom went out, and so he goes through the ordeal of taking off his backpack and grabbing the keys from the front pocket.

barely awake enough to care about anything, mark fully drags his backpack across the floor and into the apartment. he locks the door behind him, leaves his bag by the shoe rack, toes off his sneakers, and steps into his house slippers. one step past the hallway has him pausing in his tracks.

there, in the middle of the room, stands yugyeom. arms stretched out on both sides, lifted at an angle as if he were a _tree_ , wrapped in sparkly green and red garlands and white ribbon, ornaments hanging off of his fingers and his ears, a star cut out of yellow paper stuck to his forehead.

"wh—"

"merry christmas!" yugyeom grins, stifling a laugh so that his body won't shake and make all the ornaments fall off.

"what..." mark can't help laughing at how ridiculous it all is. he looks around the room to see festive lights on the walls and paper snowmen on the windowsill and stockings hanging on the tv. he looks back at yugyeom, the makeshift christmas tree, and he laughs again—hearty, endearing.

"i didn't have enough money left for a christmas tree," yugyeom explains, chuckling when mark removes the star from where it's taped to his forehead, a soft red spreading across his cheeks and up to his ears when mark laughingly and ever so gently removes the red garland wrapped around his neck like a scarf. 

"aren't your arms tired? how long have you been standing here?" mark asks, ever the doctor.

heart melting, yugyeom coughs. he pretends it's the garland glitter making its way up his nose, "not long."

"well, i love it," mark says, unable to help himself from chuckling over and over. he removes the last of the garlands from yugyeom's person and puts all the sparkly itchy things down on the couch. there's a pause, a beat. laughter dying down, a comfortable silence settling in. dinner plans and how was your day's. mark says i need to sleep for a bit, but wake me up in two hours, and we'll order from that taiwanese place. yugyeom says okay, alright, the weatherman says we might get first snow, but i don't know he's been saying that for two weeks, global warming is so crazy isn't it, hyung?

mark agrees, already half asleep by the time he reaches the doorway into their shared bedroom. he stops and turns around, "thanks, gyeom," he says softly, then closes the door behind him.

***

"oh, hey! first snow!" yugyeom yells, spewing out rice from his mouth. he runs to the window to look, then runs to the bedroom and slides open the door into the tiny balcony. he holds out his hand to catch the snow, and a second later, mark is standing beside him, holding out his hand too.

little snow crystals fall gently onto their open palms, melting almost immediately upon their skin.

it's a wonder, and so they watch for a moment.

mark glances over to yugyeom.

" _don't,_ " he says warningly when he sees that look in yugyeom's eye—the look that says he's about to lean over the railing and stick his tongue out to eat the snow.

yugyeom frowns, holding out both hands to catch more snow instead.

without warning, hands cold and wet, he presses his palms against mark's cheeks. shocked, mark immediately jerks away, laughing as he tries to swat yugyeom's hands away. yugyeom laughs, squishing mark's cheeks even more. mark pokes at yugyeom's ribs in a desperate bid to make him step away. ticklish, yugyeom jumps back, body jerking in the most unnatural way.

the snowfall grows heavier, and so they step back into the cozy warmth of their apartment.

elbows brushing, cheeks blushing, ears red and eyes sparkling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes!!!! got7 christmas fic fluffy cute christmas time fun. i'll be posting chapters sporadically throughout december... nextchapterisjinsonheheheheandjjp... hmmmmmmm


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